VideoBro, the free iPhone app where friends and family film one shared tape and get back a single home movie, has added two new ways to watch that movie. VHS mode is a playback switch that shows a film with the look of an old videotape. The Tape Den is a little 3D living room in the web browser, where a person's own finished films sit on a shelf as tapes, next to a VCR, a TV and a couch.
Home movies used to come with a ritual: somebody picked a tape off the shelf, put it in the machine and sat down with everyone else to watch it on the family TV, the picture a little soft and the colours bleeding at the edges. VideoBro was built to bring back the making half of that, with one tape everyone fills, clips in the order they were shot, and one finished film. VHS mode and the Tape Den bring back some of the watching half. Both are optional, and the film underneath stays the same clean file however someone chooses to watch it.
VHS mode
VHS mode is a switch for watching, not an effect applied to the footage. With it on, a tape or finished film plays in a 4:3 picture with the softness, colour bleed, grain, wobble and head-switching noise of a home VCR, and a VCR counter ticking up. It is off until someone turns it on, and it is set per phone or per browser, so nobody else on the tape sees a change.
- On iPhone. The switch is in Profile, under Playback. It covers the tape as it plays in the app and the finished film in the Tape Cabinet. For the finished film the sound changes too, gently: the deepest bass and the highest treble are trimmed so it sounds a little like tape, with no hiss added.
- In the browser. The page that plays a shared film, and the Tape Cabinet on the web, have a VHS switch on the TV's front panel. Anyone watching a shared link can use it, with no app and no account. In the browser only the picture changes; the sound plays as it was recorded.
- Never baked in. Develop still makes one clean widescreen film. A download is that clean file, a shared link opens as the plain film until the person watching turns the switch on, and turning it off puts everything back. VHS mode is never darker than normal playback.
VHS mode came to the iPhone app on September 12, 2026, in version 1.0.2, and the September 18 update, version 1.0.5, gave it the sound. More about VHS mode.
The Tape Den
The Tape Den is a small 3D living room that opens in a web browser at watchvideobro.com/tape-den. It has a shelf of tapes, a VCR under a CRT television, a coffee table with a remote on it, and a couch. Signed in, the shelf holds the finished films from the visitor's own Tape Cabinet, one tape each. Take one off the shelf, push it into the VCR and sit down, and the film plays on the TV. The remote pauses, rewinds and fast-forwards at eight times speed, and turns the volume up and down.
It works in a phone's browser too. There you tap between the cabinet, the TV and the couch, and one Play tape button carries out the whole routine: the tape comes off the shelf, goes into the VCR, and the view settles on the couch in front of the TV. Visitors who are not signed in find three house tapes on the shelf to try it with.
The Tape Den is a novelty, and VideoBro presents it as one. It shows the films a person already has and never changes them, and every one of them plays just as well in the Tape Cabinet, in the app or on the web. VideoBro's own Tape Cabinet page sums it up:
“It does nothing the Cabinet doesn't already do. We just wanted a VCR.”
Pricing and availability
VHS mode and the Tape Den are free. VHS mode is in the VideoBro iPhone app and in its browser player. The Tape Den runs in a web browser, on a computer or a phone, and is not part of the iPhone app. VideoBro itself is free and includes 2 GB of storage, about an hour of footage. Each tape holds up to 2 hours of footage and up to 8 people.
VideoBro is on the App Store for iPhone. Get VideoBro on the App Store.
About VideoBro
VideoBro is an iPhone app for making home movies together. Friends and family film into one shared tape from their own phones, every clip lands in the order it was shot, and VideoBro turns the finished tape into a single film for everyone on it. VideoBro is free, and is made by brothers Doug and Drew. watchvideobro.com
Media contact
Logos, screenshots and App Store reviews are in the press kit.